MATTOON - It's a new name as well as a new home for the Coles County Mental Health Center.

The center completed its move Tuesday to the site of the former Blaw-Knox manufacturing plant at 750 Broadway Ave. East. It's now called Lifelinks Mental Health, which Executive Director Kathy Roberts said better indicates who the center serves and the range of what it offers.

"We discovered that people come to us from outside Coles County," Roberts said. "The name better reflects who we are and what we're about."

The center moved from 1300 Charleston Ave. and two nearby buildings on Broadway Avenue in Mattoon for many reasons, not the least of which was the need for space, said Lynette Ashmore, the center's director of community support services.

The biggest benefits to clients are that the entire center is now in one location and there's a chance to add services.

The Coles County Mental Health Association, the center's governing group, bought part of the former Blaw-Knox property about two years ago. Roberts said the move to the new location took place over the weekend as scheduled, and there are now only a few things left to do to make it complete.

"It went extraordinarily well," Roberts said of the move. "Our staff worked really hard along with the moving company. All the essentials are here. Construction went very well."

While part of the center's new building doesn't look that much different than the manufacturing plant that used to be there, that's because what used to be a warehouse bay will be converted into a two-story, 40,000-square-foot addition. Roberts said it will contain about six meeting rooms for training and community use, and for arrangements with other area health providers that need space.

"We just had an opportunity to develop that space relatively inexpensively," she said.

She also said a big push behind the need for a new location is demand for the center's services, which have increased about 20 percent a year for the last five years. The center generally gets about 100 to 150 new service requests each month, she added.

"In general, there is more acceptance for treatment," Roberts said. "People are more willing to seek treatment."

Dave Fopay can be reached at dfopay@ jg-tc.com or 348-5733.